Thirteen years after the publication of Native Son Wright reexamined the problem of the ethical criminal in the role of Cross Damon, the protagonist of his
novel, The Outsider.
1 Cross is in some respects an
intellectualized Bigger; although he has read Heidegger, Jaspers, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzche, Husserl,
and Dostoevsky, his psychology is essentially Bigger's.
Violence gives Cross a sense of meaning, a sense of
freedom in a world that is otherwise hostile or chaotic.
After committing two "senseless" murders Cross experiences fulfillment. "The universe seemed to be
rushing at him with all its totality. He was anchored
once again in life, in the flow of things; the world
glowed with an intensity so sharp it made his body
ache."
2

In this novel too, Wright refocuses his thoughts on
the revolutionism of the Marxist Communist and that
of the metaphysical rebel. Unlike Native Son, however, the differences between the two are not nearly so
contradictory. Early in the novel Cross finds himself
in conflict with the Communist Party -- not because he
is so different from other Communists, but because he
is so much like them. The Communists, he discovers,
use idealism and ideology to mask their real intentions
-- their will, their desire for power. For Cross, too,
power is an end in itself -- it is the basic ingredient of
human nature; it is fundamentally a kind of libidinal
assertion that often conceals itself in altruistic motives

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